


Coming to an Understanding

by Peppermint_YGO (Peppermint_Shamrock)



Series: Refraction [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Arc V Rare Pair Week, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 07:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15262695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peppermint_Shamrock/pseuds/Peppermint_YGO
Summary: Masumi struggles with her conflicting feelings as she finally tells Ray what she's heard about LDS's secret research.Written for Arc V Rare Pair Week 2018 Day 5 Prompt - Rumor





	Coming to an Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I still write YGO!
> 
> It's Arc V Rare Pair Week and some [lovely](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15141566) [people](http://darkfromday.tumblr.com/post/175723396256/shine-bright) wrote refractionshipping fics earlier this week! I'd be remiss not to write some more myself after such wonderful contributions (go check them out!) to this tiny boat of mine, so here's a short continuation to my Refraction series!

It was at least two weeks after her injury had healed before Masumi let Ray in on the information Sawatari had given her. And not for lack of contact, either…Ray had the annoying habit of wanting to check up on Masumi quite frequently. Masumi had had to schedule time in for her in order to prevent Ray and Kurosaki from running into each other. She’d had no qualms about telling Ray as much, either.

“He won’t trust you. _I_ don’t trust you, for that matter.” It had sounded like an afterthought even to her own ears. But the part about Kurosaki was definitely true…Masumi desperately wanted a second opinion on whether Ray could really be an ally, but she was certain she’d lose Kurosaki’s help the instant she even broached the subject with him.

So, she had spent a couple weeks wondering whether she was crazy, whether Ray had charmed her or something, for even considering working with her to, well, prevent her from ever coming back into existence in the first place.

It didn’t help that in the dead of night, sometimes Masumi’s thoughts would drift and wonder what it was like be in such a state of nonexistence. Or rather, a divided existence. She shouldn’t care! She shouldn’t care at all about Ray, no matter how nice the girl insisted on being. And yet her traitorous mind whispered doubts in her mind, doubts over whether _Ray_ deserved the fate Masumi would have her condemned to. It shouldn’t matter! It shouldn’t matter, because _Yuzu_ didn’t deserve what happened to her, and same for all the others.

Ah, but it was the problem of the trolley and the people tied to the tracks, wasn’t it? Throw the switch and the blood’s on your hands, even if more are saved; do nothing and more lives are lost, but it’s not on your hands.

But Masumi never thought she’d be the kind to struggle to throw the switch. Maybe if the one on the tracks was someone she cared about, but since when had Ray become someone she cared about?

Didn’t Yuzu mean more?

Didn’t Hokuto?

Didn’t Marco-sensei?

Who the hell was Ray Akaba to make Masumi to feel this way?

She was no one. She was a stranger. She was a false hero. She was the reason so many people had been trampled under Academia. She was the reason why Yuzu, Hokuto, and all the others were ripped from this world before their time.

She was sitting in Masumi’s living room and offering to help.

“I know that you don’t like or trust me. And that you’d do anything to be rid of me and have the others back instead,” Ray said. “I told you that it’s impossible, but I can see in your eyes that you haven’t given up. And with the things you’ve half said in the past couple of weeks, I’m starting to think maybe there’s a reason.”

Masumi said nothing, but faced Ray directly, refusing to show the weakness that plagued her.

“If you’ve really found a way to set things right, I’ll help,” Ray said. “No matter what it takes.”

Masumi still could not quite believe that. Sure, Ray had some sort of weird hero complex, but the idea of being so willing to sacrifice yourself, especially when you were celebrated by all except a few bitter souls – that seemed unthinkable to Masumi. However, it wasn’t likely that she could keep the secret much longer…and if she wanted proof, she – as much as she loathed to admit it – needed Ray’s help.

“Time travel,” Masumi said. “I’ve heard rumors that LDS is working on developing time travel. I want to know if it’s true.”

“I don’t know,” Ray said slowly, after a few moments. “I haven’t heard such things, but I’m not that involved with LDS, really.”

“I just need to get into LDS’s secret labs. I’ll find out what the truth there.”

“If you were caught, you’d get in serious trouble, you could get kicked out of LDS,” Ray said.

“I don’t care. The rules have never stopped me when it’s something important,” Masumi said, stubbornly. It was true, she didn’t hesitate to break rules if they were in her way. And they were definitely in her way now. But Ray faced her with equal stubbornness.

“I won’t let you throw away your schooling over this. I’ll do it.”

“What?!” Masumi jumped to her feet. “No way. Why should you tell _me_ if you find anything? You know as well as I do that if this were successful, you’d be gone, dead!”

Ray remained sitting, and spoke calmly, soothingly. It irritated Masumi even more.

“I want to help. I want to make things right. If there’s any chance…I’ll tell you everything I find, I swear it. You know that I’m way less likely to get in trouble than you for getting into LDS secrets, it’s much better for me to do it…”

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear any of that nonsense. I just want you to get me in, and that’s it. I don’t trust you any more than that,” Masumi said, her hands shaking in fists at her sides.

“Masumi…”

“Don’t! Don’t. Why should I believe you really want to help? Why would you? Why should I believe that you’re willing to sacrifice yourself when you’re living quite happily with the adoration of millions and everything you could ever want?” Masumi demanded.

Ray flushed, her eyes narrowing and her mouth twisting tightly. For a few moments, she was frozen like that, before she abruptly got to her feet. She stalked over to Masumi, who involuntarily took a few steps backward.

She had never seen Ray like this before. For all the yelling Masumi had done, for all the bitterness she had tossed at Ray, the distrust and disgust…Ray had borne it all with an infuriating calm understanding, patience, and sympathy that Masumi had never wanted from her. But now, Ray burned, rage glinting off her like the sun on polished cinnabar. It was at once familiar, reminiscent of Yuzu, and strange, nothing like Yuzu at all. Perhaps Masumi should have known better, expected it from a girl who had felled a demon, but not until now had she ever thought that Ray could feel dangerous.

“ _Everything I could ever want_?!?” Ray said, incredulously, her voice low and near a hiss. “I have _nothing_ , Masumi. Nothing! My home, the world I lived in, was destroyed and shattered a long time ago. If there is anyone else from that world in this one, anyone else that I knew, they’d be all but unrecognizable to me now. They certainly wouldn’t remember me, or the world before this one. My father is dead. The rest of my supposed family are strangers, and they don’t want me.”

Masumi couldn’t speak. Ray was breathing heavily from her rant.

“Do you know what that’s like? Have you ever been away from home before, completely alone? How about being in a place that’s not completely alien – no, it’s worse? It’s worse because there’s things that seem familiar for a moment, but you take more than a glance and it’s all _wrong_ and you just feel empty inside. All while knowing that you can never go back, what you once had is lost forever, and you should have been too? And then, when you’ve convinced yourself that it was all worth it, that it was a necessary sacrifice so that people can live on…then you run into someone who rips even that little comfort away from you, who convinces you that there _might have been a better way_ , that all this could have been avoided…”

“Do you expect me to apologize for that?” Masumi retorted, finding her voice at last. There was no heat in it.

“No,” Ray said, with a trace of resignation. “Because you weren’t wrong. And if it’s true that there’s a way to set things right, a chance to protect the world from the demon without the high cost, I want to take it. And I want you to _understand_ why I want to take it. If it costs my life, it doesn’t matter.”

They both stood there in silence as their anger died down.

“I understand,” Masumi said finally.

And she did. She wondered how she could have been so stupid. She’d been so focused on her own pain that she’d never even considered that Ray could be suffering too, that Ray didn’t have anything to live for. And of course, of course the girl who had once sacrificed herself to save the world from utter devastation would be willing to sacrifice herself again to save more lives. That kind of self-sacrificial attitude didn’t just disappear. How could Masumi have missed that obvious fact?

She was afraid that she already knew the answer.

If Ray didn’t care that she would be sacrificed, if she was fully prepared to embrace the cost, then what Masumi had been blinded by was only the distortion of her own feelings.

 _She_ was the one who didn’t want Ray to die.


End file.
